1. Field Of The Invention
The present invention relates to hand carriers for a snow ski equipment set comprising respective pairs of skis and poles.
2. Description Of The Prior Art
An individual set of recreational ski equipment basically comprises four individual pieces; a pair of skis and a pair of poles. Although the collective of this equipment is not heavy, approximately twenty to thirty pounds, the physical configuration is unweildly and difficult to unitize for hand carriage.
The skis are long (approx. 190 cm), narrow (approx. 7 cm), thin (approx. 1.5 cm) and cambered along the length. On the top face of each ski centered just aft of midlength are binders for securing the skier's boot to the ski, heel and toe. These binders project from the ski top face from 4 to 8 cm.
Each pole comprises a tapered rod of approximately 1.5 cm diameter and 100 cm long. At one end of the pole is an 8-10 cm diameter ring secured coaxially of the pole axis.
An obvious assemblage of this equipment for hand carriage is to longitudinally align the skis, bottom-to-bottom, for one hand and similar alignment of the poles for the other. Because of the ski camber, however, when so aligned, the two skis frictionally contact each other only at the tip and tail. Consequently, there is a strong tendency for the skis to slip out of longitudinal alignment and cross, thereby twisting out of the carrier's hand.
This problem with hand carriage of ski equipment being as old as the spot itself has inspired numerous devices for securely unitizing the several pieces for one-hand carriage of it all. Most of such devices have been successful in achieving the primary objective. Representative, is U.S. Pat. No. 3,935,977 to R. B. Bonnett which discloses a briefcase like device having two cover portions hinged together along a common edge. Channels are provided within the cover portions parallel with the hinge axis for receiving respective ski and pole pieces. Thereby, the skis are confined in longitudinal parallel, bottom-face-to-bottom-face alignment. The poles are confined in respective channels adjacent one ski edge.
The difficulty with such bottom-face-to-bottom-face hand carriers is security to a personal auto top carrier. There are two types of such auto top carriers. One type secures the skis on edge with the ski bottom plane parallel with the vertical plane. This type auto carrier is compatible with the Bonnett type hand carrier but presents a high frontal profile to the auto slip stream. In addition, such edge mounting carriers are relatively expensive to fabricate, requiring two frames with matching pairs of mounting posts.
The other type auto carrier, often characterized as a scissors carrier, comprises two simple bar frames transversely spanning the auto top width. Each full span frame has two, centrally hinged, half-span bars to clamp the skis and poles therebetween in a common, low profile plane.
The scissors type auto carrier enjoys the most predominate public acceptance but because of the low profile above the auto top cannot accomodate an equipment set unitized by a Bonnett type hand carrier: one ski binding interferes with the auto top plane.
Those who prefer to use the scissors type auto carrier for highway transport of their equipment are confronted with a hassle of removing the equipment from the auto top and reassembling it in the hand carrier for transport to the slope; such double handling being repeated in reverse at the end of the ski-day.
The U.S. Pat. No. 3,225,987 to E. V. Bonner, Jr. is addressed to a unitized assembly of ski equipment that is compatible with low profile auto top carriage. However, the Bonner, Jr. device is focused on exploitation of one pole as a handle for the unitized assembly. This design objective requires at least a pair of unitizing frames, each secured at opposite axial ends of the poles. Not only does the user have to align all four pieces of the equipment twice for a unitized assembly but he's left with the dilemma of what to do with the two frames while on the slope.
An objective of the present invention, therefore, is to teach the construction and use of a compact, single unit, hand carriage device for unitizing the four primary elements of a ski equipment set that is compatible with a low profile auto top carrier.
Another objective of the present invention is to teach the design and construction of a ski equipment hand carriage that is compatible with a low profile top carrier but also permits two primary ski equipment sets to be comfortably held in one hand.